Marissa Mayer's 9 Notions of Innovation
The world is made by people with lists — Nixon kept his enemies list, Machiavelli had his list of rules for a prince, and how could the Black Mamba have killed Bill without her list of katana-victims-to-be? That's why Marissa Mayer's 9 Notions of Innovation prove her worth to the world.
But BusinessWeek publishes the list with sparse subtitles and bland illustrations. Where's the in-depth commentary? The overachieving Google VP deserves better.
- Ideas come from everywhere: Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team. Other examples of innovative finance teams: Enron, WorldCom, President Bush's budget advisor.
- Share everything you can: Every idea, every project, every deadline — it's all accessible to everyone on the intranet. And yet Googlers are very careful not to accidentally have any idea what everyone else is doing — especially the PR department.
- You're brilliant, we're hiring: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience. As for high-experience, low-intelligence, that's why they have CEO Eric Schmidt.
- A license to pursue dreams: Employees get a "free" day a week. Half of new launches come from this "20% time." It has to be approved, and Larry decided it has to be close to the "80% time," but sure, it's kinda free. They have $5 massages and you're going to nitpick over this?
- Innovation, not instant perfection Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely. The first priority isn't making the customers happy — it's pushing releases to keep the press happy.
- Don't politic, use data: Mayer discourages the use of "I like" in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics. It's not "Larry Page favors me because I have blackmail." It's "Larry Page dated me for three years. Larry Page is [redacted] inches long. Larry Page is classified with low self-esteem. Larry Page is promoting me over you."
- Creativity loves restraint: Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines. Or give them leather straps and a ball gag, and you'll see, creativity adores restraint.
- Worry about usage and users, not money: Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow. Then, cash in before the money follows the stockholders out the door.
- Don't kill projects — morph them: There's always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged. Ugly projects never die, they just get passed to a new team and warped out of all recognition until the original developer sits at his desk, gorging himself on free trail mix and weeping.